


Favorite Food

by Bluebird_Rose



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Food, Food Porn, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Hospitalization, I have complicated feelings about will and food ok, I'm Sorry, Inspired by Twitter, M/M, My First Fanfic, No Smut, but there's lots of feelings if you're into that, chock full of feelings and food, the bone saw scene is in here, the gutting scene too, this is basically a series of loosely connected scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 00:45:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12569888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluebird_Rose/pseuds/Bluebird_Rose
Summary: An examination of Will Graham's relationship to food (and others) throughout his life.





	Favorite Food

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [@GramGramsBoxers](https://twitter.com/GramGramsBoxers) on Twitter ([TheSmolBirb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSmolBirb/pseuds/TheSmolBirb) here on ao3) who asked, "What do you think Will's favorite dessert and entree would be?" 
> 
> That question seized control of my brain and would not let go until I wrote this.
> 
> This is my first fic ever, so I don't know what I'm doing. I will treasure any feedback/comments you leave and keep them safe and warm in my hoard, dragon-like.
> 
> Please let me know if there is anything else that needs to be tagged in this.

If you had asked him Before, he would have answered right away: “Peach pie with vanilla ice cream.” The best dessert he ever ate had been just that: a simple slice of peach pie, hot from the oven, with a cold scoop of vanilla ice cream slowly melting over it. It had been served to him in a shitty-looking roadside diner, but for some reason this one was perfect. The peaches were cooked right through but not mushy, the spices in the glaze were perfectly balanced with notes of cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, not one overpowering the others. The crust was crisp and golden brown on top, giving way with the perfect slight snap when he slid his fork in. And over it all, the simple delight of the melting vanilla ice cream. But what made this pie the Best was that it was eaten at the end of a perfect day. His dad had found work and they had decided to settle in for a while, he still had two glorious months left before he’d have to enroll in school, they had moved into a trailer this afternoon which was (almost) new, and his dad was in a rare good mood. He had pulled them into the diner parking lot on a lark. “Best peach pie in the state, huh? I guess we gotta check their claim. We can’t let them get away with tellin’ lies about something like that,” he’d said, parking the truck in the dirt lot in front of the diner between two other equally beaten-up pickups. 

So there he sat, slowly eating the Best Peach Pie in the State, sitting next to his dad doing the exact same thing, feeling warm and happy and pleasantly surprised that the sign in the window might have actually turned out to be true. He’d already got used to being disappointed in the world, and in other people. He’d got used to the fact that no one else would be able to really see him, even though he could see them perfectly, everything that made them who they were, right down to their bones. But with every bite of that pie he learned that sometimes you might be able to sit next to someone warm, and feel hopeful for a moment, sharing something surprisingly sweet in a place you never expected.

So Before, if you had asked Will what his favorite dessert was, he would have answered instantly, “Peach pie with vanilla ice cream.”

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If you had asked him Before what his favorite food was, it wouldn’t have taken him a long time to answer. He probably would have come up with something lifted from his reflections of the opinions of others. Cheeseburgers, he would have said, something classic and American that could be found at anywhere his dad’s wandering took him. Whether or not it was really his favorite was irrelevant; underneath the seeming simple question lurked his dad’s complex about his inability to give Will what he really needed. If he could understand enough to do this one thing though, give his son his favorite food for dinner sometimes, then maybe he was doing alright. 

His dad would come home from work, dirty and tired and smelling of engine oil and metal, carrying bags from some fast food place or the other. They’d eat, his dad sitting in front of the TV, Will sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework. Sometimes Will would come home from school to a note left on the kitchen table. “Out late tonight, fend for yourself.” or, “I’ll be home tomorrow night, you better not skip school tomorrow or I’ll hear about it.” If times were good he would get one of the frozen dinners out of the deep freeze and put it in the microwave to heat. If times were not so good he would grab some dry cereal or sandwich bread, eating it slowly as he sat on the steps of the trailer looking out into the woods as dark slowly fell around him. The quiet and dark would wrap him up and he’d go deep inside himself, trying to purge himself of the influence of others that coated him like thick layers of paint, paring himself down and peeling away the foreign thoughts and feelings to expose the hidden core that was Will alone. 

\---------------------------------------

Later, long years after leaving the boatyards and bayous behind for the prestige of marking papers and viewing horrors, he’s carved out a place for himself in the world. If someone asks him about his favorite food he has an answer prepared and ready. “Fish,” he always says, though in truth he doesn’t feel any real attachment to the meat itself. For someone who fishes as much as he does, it’s an easy enough answer that people tend to accept at face value. Plus they can then ask him how he takes it, baked or fried or grilled or a hundred other ways, and that’s it, one conversation down. He tends to go with the easiest preparation these days: cleaned, oiled, salted and peppered, and put in the oven. Fuel for the day, acquired, caught and prepared with his own hands in his own house in the woods, surrounded by his pack at the end of the day and finally pared down to himself, breathing in and out and not thinking about anything in particular.

\---------------------------------------

His first dinner with Hannibal is an Experience. Not the first dinner he’d been to at Hannibal’s house, his awkward dropping by to bring wine and talk only to find preparations for a dinner party in full swing. He had hoped Hannibal would be alone, that he would maybe open the wine and maybe pour a glass or two and maybe… but no there is a party, Hannibal is master of the kitchen stage preparing for his audience, and Will has no place here. He dismisses Hannibal’s invitation with a practiced laugh, wishing.

No, their first dinner together is an Experience. After what he had glimpsed of the preparations for the party Will was ready to contend with intimidatingly complex dishes composed of dozens of high-class ingredients, carefully prepared and combined and wound together into whole artistic tableaus on the plate. What he is greeted with instead is a simple dinner, the most delicious he has ever had. 

A starter of clear vegetable soup and fresh bread, followed by grilled pork with mashed potatoes and gravy and yellow squash on the side, straight off any southern menu of his childhood. Dessert is homemade pomegranate sherbet, a clear, tart dish that cleans his palate and leaves his lips stained a deep red.

“I wouldn’t have thought that you’d make yellow squash and taters, Hannibal,” he’d half joked. “I would have figured you more for artichoke hearts and truffles and sauces made from golden fruits plucked right from the Garden.”

“A meal should be tailored to suit the guest’s palate, not the other way around,” he’d answered. I know you, he didn’t say. I see you, he didn’t say. I know what you like, and what you don’t like, and how to make you feel comfortable despite all your instincts screaming at you that this is too good for you, that something like you could never be seen by anyone, he didn’t say. 

“O-oh,” Will finally managed to force out. “Well I appreciate the consideration. It was all delicious.”

“Thank you for saying so, Will,” said Hannibal. “I am always glad to share my table with someone who can appreciate it.”

It starts there, slowly. Will comes over again the next week after his appointment to have dinner, then twice the following week, until eventually he has dinner at Hannibal’s more often than not. Though the menu changes every time the overall theme does not: simple ingredients done well, that draw Will in with their warmth and underlying promise.

After, lying on the kitchen floor in his own blood, breathing in the heavy copper smell that has soaked into his bones and his brain and his being, staring at Abigail's pale white face as she gasps out her last, he remembers all of those meals they shared. Holding his own guts in his hands, he lies back, and wades into the quiet of the stream. Will pared down yet again, exposed to his core, and even deeper to expose the hollow underneath. There is nothing in him but blood and now that has all flooded out he is left an empty vessel. 

\---------------------------------------

Recovery is slow. He gets an infection which sets him back weeks, necessitates the installation of a colostomy bag. If he ever had any appetite it has long abandoned him. Still, food is fuel and he has to survive and he has to keep moving and to do that he has to eat. So he dutifully takes in the bland hospital food, drinks the nutritional shakes, submits to the exams and the surgery and the surgical revisions until he is well enough to stand on his own and leave the hospital.

He carefully never thinks about the meals he shared with Hannibal. About the ginger pork. About the ortolans. About Randall’s body laid out on Hannibal’s table, an offering for an awesome and terrible god. About the dozens of dishes Hannibal prepared for him, to share with him, thinking of him and giving him what he needed. While all the while Will was lying through his teeth. Lying to everyone, especially himself.

So now he spends his days alone, working on his boat. Jack comes by, they talk, Jack leaves. Will looks for the usual fear and anxiety and sense of being torn between his loyalties that he usually feels after a visit from Jack, but there is nothing. Nothing inside him but the bologna sandwich and Ensure he methodically took in for lunch.

\---------------------------------------

He is. Where is he. He is. Pain. Burning in his shoulder. Burning in his body. He sees. It is dark. He is. He is in a chair. He is sitting in a chair. He is sitting in a chair at a table. He is bound. He is. Hannibal. Hannibal is here. He and Hannibal are having dinner. Hannibal has prepared something for him. They are having dinner. They are here together in the dark. This is good. Will likes having dinner with Hannibal. Hannibal always knows what he needs. Hannibal can see him. Hannibal touches him so tenderly. This is good. Oh. Oh. Hannibal brings a spoon to his lips. For the first time at Hannibal’s table his mouth is filled with bitterness. What. What is this. This is soup. This soup is not for him. He pulls away, head moving loosely on his neck. The world swirls. “This soup isn’t very good,” he manages to slur our. Hannibal looks. Hannibal looks like broken glass. Hannibal looks bitter. His mouth is filled with bitterness and Hannibal’s bitterness washes over him and the world is filled with bitterness and he is filled with bitterness and. Jack. Jack is here. Jack is screaming and there is a sound, a loud sound that washes out the world and fills him up and his head hurts his head hurts his head hurts why and his skull vibrates and the sound and his eyes roll back and he meets Hannibal’s through the red and Hannibal and warmth drips down over his face and and and and

\---------------------------------------

These days he has an easy answer to the question about his favorite food: his wife’s meatloaf. After all, what kind of husband doesn’t have a favorite of his wife’s cooking? She cares enough to make it for him on special days without him even having to ask. The meatloaf is good. It’s coated with ketchup just like it used to be in the diners. The green beans are good. They come from a can and she adds a spritz of lemon for flavor. The dinner rolls are good. They come from a package, spread with dollops of margarine from a tub at the table. He sits at the table in their warm dining room with her, and the boy, and his dogs, and her dogs, and their dogs in the house they have together, and in the place where there was only pain and blood before he doesn’t feel anything at all.

\---------------------------------------

Another table. Another shared meal with Hannibal. But this meal has a place for a third, an interloper. Bedelia sits at the head of the table, in her place of honor as befits the founder of the feast. She lists a little, clutching something under the table against her remaining leg. Even still affected by his injuries from the fall Hannibal has outdone himself - the ti leaf wrapped leg still steaming in the candlelight, filling the room with the delicious scent of fresh roasted Bedelia. She lists again, then straightens, not willing to give Will the satisfaction. Hannibal does the honor and slices into the meat, plating them three beautifully arranged servings, garnished with fruit and flowers.

“Thank you for joining us, Bedelia,” says Hannibal. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to have you, but I am afraid I can’t allow such rudeness before we even start the meal. Put away the fork.”

Bedelia stiffens and sways again, managing to fix her eyes on Hannibal’s for a moment, but whatever she sees there makes her slide the fork back into place on the table next to the rest of her silverware. Smiling at her acquiescence, Hannibal serves all of them then takes his own place across from Will.

Will meets his gaze for a moment, then he drops his eyes to his plate. He delicately cuts a bite from his serving and brings it to his mouth. He breathes in the scent, then takes it in and chews. Perfect. Juicy and tender. It’s just what he needed. He feels hungry for the first time in a long time, and savors the feeling.

Hannibal gazes at him across the candlelit table, his countenance unreadable to anyone but Will. You are terribly and fearfully made, it says. I could see you everyday, forever, and I would remember this time, it says. This was all I wanted for you, for both of us, it says. I love you, it says.

Will locks eyes with him as he chews, and he lets Hannibal’s feelings wash over him and fill him up and carry him away.


End file.
